


ii. who's the fool now

by e_sattler



Category: The Mandalorian (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-11
Updated: 2019-12-26
Packaged: 2021-02-25 20:41:52
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 7,821
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21751663
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/e_sattler/pseuds/e_sattler
Summary: A Collection of One Shots
Relationships: The Mandalorian (The Mandalorian TV)/Omera (Star Wars)
Comments: 30
Kudos: 88





	1. Chapter 1

**Year: 16 ABY | Location: Sorgan | Time: 20:23 SPT**

The war was over. The Empire had fallen in a blaze of glory with Vader dead and its remnant factions all but dissipated. There would always be tension in the galaxy, that much was sure, but when Din Djarin walked away from his fight, it was without hesitation. The New Republic was strong and it would only grow stronger.

As much as he didn’t want to admit it, Din was too old for that shit anymore. His hair gone grey and everything hurt (stars, did everything hurt) in a way that kept him awake even when the nightmares didn’t. He’d never once been the least bit bothered by violence and was comfortable to have his bankroll steeped in blood, but as the years dragged on, it weighed on him heavier and heavier until he made his last job and refused the credits.

“We had a deal,” the man said, his voice almost desperate with the urge to fulfill it.

“Consider it settled.”

The Razor Crest had seen better days when he bartered it for a V-speeder on Coruscant and there had only been the faintest twinge of nostalgia before he’d left just as quickly as he’d come, a course set for Sorgan and without much of a plan after that. The Child was safe on Tatooine, after all, and he had nothing else tying him to any fixed point. It seemed almost clinical to admit that, that his family was dead and that he’d never exactly amassed a plurality of friends, though he did for a moment consider finding Fennec Shand for a drink. There was nothing for him to fight for anymore and that was freeing in a way that he’d not anticipated.

Sorgan looked as it had when he’d left it seven years earlier. The trees swayed in an almost absent and soft handed breeze, their verdant leaves drifting lazily towards the loamy forest floor to tilt and settle. Water babbled along unconscious tracks and he followed the creek all the way to the village where it spilled into the krill ponds, their bioluminescence almost unconscionably bright. Beyond the council house, he could see huts dotted with light and shadows moving behind the drapes and he felt out of place in a moment. His body was tired and his mind was foggy, but more than anything, he felt the pinpricks of fear down his back and had moved to leave when he heard her voice. “

Who is that?” Din froze and relaxed all in one breath, the sound of her voice more soothing than any balm would have been. He swallowed and tucked his chin down so that he could rub the back of his bare neck before he turned to look at her. The sight nearly undid him, all soft lines and sharp edges at one. Omera was, if possible, more striking that he remembered but older too, with pieces of grey twisted into her braid where it was pulled over her shoulder. “Hi,” he said finally, his own voice foreign in his ears.

She looked as though she’d seen a ghost, the dimple in her cheek pulling when her chin shook once and then she was moving, down the steps and across the space to catch him in a hug so tight it nearly took his breath away. “We didn’t hear from you and we assumed the worst,” she murmured against his cheek. “Too long.”

He agreed with a kiss that tinged him warm and pomegranate, his hands gone to flatten against her back so that she wouldn’t escape him again. “Too long.”


	2. Chapter 2

The thing about Mandalorian weddings is that there are no Mandalorian weddings. There’s only three ways out of the Guild, after all: death, betrayal, or exile. Din Djarin had avoided death and betrayal fairly well during his time under the helm, but the exile part got a little touchy after the fact.

“Is it really exile if you voluntarily go into it?” Cara Dune had asked him when he landed on Sorgan for the second time, this time without the Child and without his armor. “You’re a lot prettier than I was expecting.”

“Thanks,” Din said, though he didn’t smile even if his brow did tick up a little. “Where is she?”

The thing about Mandalorian weddings is that there had never been one until 31 ABY. Din hadn’t exactly left the Guild as it were but he’d left all the same and settled into a life with Omera like he was settling a bone out of place.

Months passed there under a lily colored sky dotted with cotton mouthed clouds. He loved her, deeply and intimately in a way that scared him sometimes, and when he asked her to marry him, it felt like the most natural thing he’d ever done.

“I love you,” he said, his voice sleep muzzed and warm where they were curled up together half past dusk. “Marry me.”

She’d answered him with a kiss and fallen asleep on his chest to the scattershot throb of his heart.

The thing about Mandalorian weddings is that they’re steeped in tradition, or at least as everything else on Mando’a, subject to it. Din had read the teachings and learned the words. He’d let Winta help him sew the sash and he’d tried to shake his nerves about being on display with a shared spotchka the night before where Cara told him stories to soothe his mind and he stayed awake all night anyway.

When the next morning came, the rain did too. It had been a millennia since it had rained on Sorgan, its own terrestrial dome alive enough to sustain it, and Din could only sit on the porch and watch the level of the ponds rise until was lapping at the bottom stair. The thunder was so loud that he didn’t hear Omera coming until sloshed up next to him and dropped to sit at his side. They shared a glance, stoic for a moment before she smiled first and him a breath later.

“Tell me,” she said quietly, their hands tucked together on top of her mud soaked dress where the lace had gone silvered grey from the krill. “I’m ready.”

He paused there and turned his head to look at her fully, overwhelmed in a breath by how beautiful she looked like that with her hair slicked to her temples under a cerulean veil. The moment stretched out into forever and when he spoke, Winta dragged herself up from where she was wading through waist deep water so that she could present him with the miraculously still dry sash.

“Ni kar'tayl gar darasuum,” he said taking both of her hands in his to make a fast that Winta could wrap the sash around. 

I love you.

“Ni kkelir cheri gar.” 

I will cherish you.

“Gar cuyir ner kebii'tra bal kaysh te Ka'ra o'r bic.” The wind picked up to tussle Winta’s curls, but it didn’t deter her from the careful knot she was tying just like Din had shown her.

You are my sky and her the stars in it.

“Adol ibic oyay bal solus solus venjii bic.”

Through this life and each one after.

The thing about Mandalorian weddings is that they’re imperfect but by the time the rain had stopped, there had been at least one.


	3. Chapter 3

In the end, it was a lapse in concentration that unmasked him. He was exhausted and sore from the inside out and almost certainly bleeding into his chest and stomach from the force of the plasma blast that had knocked out communications on Coruscant. _I’m not supposed to be here_ , he’d thought as he’d settled on his back and waited for death to come.

It never came. The ringing in his ears grew louder and louder until it was overwhelming and all at once, it was over. His world exploded into a cacophony of immersive sound and light with a tug, the face a young woman fading in and out of focus as his eyes tried to adjust to the suns.

“Get up, soldier. This is no place to die.”

He never did get to thank her, even after she saved his life. Din spent a week asleep in the high rise apartment of a Rebel nurse that took care of him while he floated in and out of consciousness. When he was well, he took the the razor she offered him and was deliberate in shaving his face for the first time in years. The soap felt dry on his skin and the scrape of the blade was almost soothing, and when he was done, he was sure he was staring a stranger in the eye.

The urge to run was great. He’d said goodbye to the nurse-a young woman from Naboo named Ydi Tarso, he found out as he was leaving-and bartered transport from Coruscant to Tatooine to see if Peli could help him once more.

“Where’s the kid?” Peli asked, the disappointment showing on her face when Din turned up empty handed. “And where’s your helmet?”

“Lost,” he answered and that was the end of it.

It took two weeks to figure out a way to get to Sorgan but it had always been where he was going. When he arrived, it was dark and loud under the incessant chattering of night bugs when he landed, the trees swaying in an empty minded breeze as he worked through the forest towards the village. The first night, he camped in a clearing out of eyesight and earshot, trying to figure out exactly what it was he was chasing. He’d almost come round to an answer when she found him.

“Hello?”

The sound of Omera’s voice jolted through Din’s body, shocking deep into his gut and curling his toes in his boots before he turned to look at her. She was just as he remembered if not more beautiful, and he was sure it showed on his face in a helpless kind of inexorable love. He swallowed and nodded once. “I’m passing through-”

“Through Sorgan?” she asked, her brows raising a little with an amused smile. “What’s your name, traveler?”

Words escaped him for a moment, lost in a humiliating kind of fear that made him sick to give legitimacy to. Omera never took her eyes off of him, though she didn’t seem the least bit frightened and before he could speak again, she offered him the bag in her hand. “My daughter knew you were back here but we didn’t want to disturb you. There’s bread and krill in here, you should eat.”

“Thank you,” Din answered finally, his voice raw and rough when he took the bag. He pushed to stand and exhaled a shaking breath before offering her a smile in return. “I won’t be here long. I’m looking for someone.”

“Here?” Omera asked, a confused look flittering over her face. She tipped her chin down and wet her lips, studying him curiously before inhaling a slow breath of recognition and pulling a hand up to press against her chest. “No. Din?”

All at once, he felt seen and free of the guilt that had come with being unmasked. It flooded to warm his chest and burned at the back of his neck until he head to look down at his feet and away. “I’m… I didn’t-I’m sorry.”

“Come,” Omera said, speaking over him before he finished. She reached impatiently for his hand and then to palm the back of his neck so that she could pull him close to hug tightly. “Stars, what happened to you?”

He felt like weeping but remained stoic as ever, the emotion tucked under his ribs thick and tarry. She smelled clean like cedar and mint when he tucked his face against her shoulder and tightened his grip at her waist before dropping the bag all together and gathering her up to hold tight.

“I came home.”


	4. Chapter 4

He should have known better, really, than to think that something that was never his in the first place was something that he had the audacity to cherish into bitterness. His return to Sorgan was sooner than he’d expected it would be, with less than a full sun cycle between when he left and came back, but the sight of Omera tucked under the arm of another man-her husband, he found out from Winta later-with a toddler at her feet stirred something sick and jealous in his gut that swelled acrid into his throat until he pushed it back down.

They were as companionable as they had always been, offering him and the Child food and lodging and conversation. Cara told him everything about what had happened after he’d left and he did the same in turn, telling her about finding Fennec and losing her again and what fell in between. 

After a third cup of spotchka, she slanted Din a glance. “He’s a soldier. Ended up here about two moons after you left.”

“I don’t care.”

“Yeah, you do.”

Din gave her a look that would have spoken volumes had he been able to see her through his visor, though she did fairly well to return it in kind all the same. “She was very kind to us and I’m grateful for it-”

“Bullshit.”

“Okay,” Din replied with an irritated huff through his nose. “Goodnight, Cara.”

“That little boy is yours, you know that, right?”

“Yeah.”

Cara arched an eyebrow in response and shrugged. “Never should have left in the first place.”

Din sighed. “I know.”


	5. Chapter 5

Twenty five years made Din Djarin an old man. He’d seen the rise and fall and rise and fall of the Empire-no, the First Order-and paid his dues. He’d done his fighting and at the end of it all, there was peace in the galaxy, at least for a moment. Seeing Leia before she’d died had been worth it, he thought. It had all been worth it.

It wasn’t worth it.

He’d always intended to return to Sorgan but he’d never thought it would take half a life. There were villages now dotting the horizon and when he found Omera’s, it had doubled in size. Children ran weaving, the women laughed where they were working at their stoops, and the men were strong and young, a sign that they had remained untouched by the war. He got glances but not as many as he had expected on his way through the long familiar paths until he found himself standing in front of the hut.

“She won’t know you.”

The voice startled him if only because he’d not expected it and he turned to find himself face to face with an angel. “Winta?” he asked, his voice quiet and a little far off. She was tall, impossibly tall and thin and perfectly made just like her mother, with a lithe frame and hair that caught silver and gold in the sun to glint and wanter with her doe eyed gaze. “How-”

“We’re all older now, Mando,” she said. It wasn’t unkind-in fact, she was smiling sadly-but the air around them seemed cold and colder until he was almost shivering. Winta noticed and reached to squeeze his shoulder. “Fever. She’s- you shouldn’t go in there, you’ll catch it too!”

Her words were lost behind the heavy slip of fabric when he pulled the door closed behind him and it was like dropping into the night all over again. The room smell sickly and stale, hot and damp from the brazier in the corner to burn the fever out, but he knew it was beyond the pale by then. Omera was frail and quiet where she was curled up on her side, her eyes open and unfocused on the wall outside of her sight. She didn’t didn’t react when he came in and Din thought for a second, for just one leonine second that maybe it were all a joke.

He crossed the room with careful steps, removing the helm as he went and letting it fall from his hand abandoned to settle on the floor in her line of sight. “Wouldn’t it be nice?” he asked quietly, his fingers trembling slightly after he tugged his glove off and reached to brush the hair from her eyes. “Settle down and raise out children here?” She didn’t smile, didn’t focus in on him or give any indication that she’d heard him other than her fingers curling at his elbow where they touched, and the fight was relit in him like something cursory and raging.

Her body was nearly weightless when Din hauled her up into his arms and carried her to settle next to the basin where he first filled the cup to put the brazier out and then again to wet a rag so that he could clean her face and give her water in careful touches to her tongue. It rolled from the corner of her mouth and down her neck to stain her blouse, the heat of her skin practically scorching when it did, and he wondered then if the fever would take him too. “Wake up,” he whispered, ducking to press a kiss to her forehead and lingering there. “Wake up, please.”

Hours passed like that. He talked to her in low tones, telling her about the rebellion and Rey and the end of the world. He told her about the Child and the Jedi and the suns beyond the Outer Rim. He told her how much Winta looked like her and how he’d never stopped wanting to come home. He told her he loved her and that he always had, and when the sun rose the next morning, he told her goodbye before she slept the long sleep. 

When she was gone, he told her the thousand apologies he couldn’t manage before.


	6. Chapter 6

Another turn around the suns made Din Djarin older than his father had ever been. He’d taken to walking the village at night to count the stars like he counted his own breaths and the habit was bleeding into the daytime now, with the warmth at his back and the stretch of something unknown under his feet. He was on his third loop of the forest, trying desperately to remember his mother’s voice singing him a happy birthday when he heard Omera instead.

“You’re going to leave a trail if you don’t go somewhere new,” she said as a greeting. She’d been following him for a bit and he’d known it the whole time, but her presence was inoffensive and perhaps even a little welcomed. “You seem troubled today.”

Din couldn’t argue with that and didn’t try to, instead choosing to fall into a companionable silence as they matched steps for a while. The clearing was peaceful when he found it and Dyn couldn’t help but turn his face towards the sun. It was milky and hazy as it kissed the treetops on its way to bed, throwing long spindling shadows across mossy grass. The sun caught gold in Omera’s hair when he looked at her and it was another thing to remind him of how grateful he was to be alive, oh so very alive when his parents were not. “It’s my birthday,” he offered finally. The look on her face almost enough to break his heart, so kind and genial when she reached to squeeze his hand that it might have been a gift. “I’m truly an old man now.”

“I thought you might be,” Omera teased, though it was gentle and friendly. She didn’t let him pull his hand away, instead lacing their fingers together even where his glove made the hold a little unwieldy. When he didn’t pull away, it was enough to embolden her. She pulled his hand to her mouth so that she could catch the fingertips of his glove between her teeth and tugged, the leather sliding easily for his hand so that she could catch it when it fell and then his hand again in her own. His palm was warm and his fingers lithe, but she didn’t dare look at him in case he might see her cheeks gone rosy.

The entire exchange took only a breath, not nearly long enough for Din to appreciate all of it, but he didn’t hesitate to take his place when they began walking again. The sun had slipped far enough behind the trees that it was pulling plum and ochre higher towards the stars, shading them in an unbelievable veil of warmth that sat in his chest like honey under his ribs. He wondered if this was what laid in front of him if he left his life behind and had to tamp down on the thought before it grew teeth and gnawed at his persistence. “Older than my father ever was,” he said finally, the feeling of needing to open up the silence overwhelming. “Younger than I will ever be again.”

She laughed at that and tipped her head to touch her temple to his shoulder for a moment before straightening again. “I’m still not entirely convinced you aren’t a five hundred year old Gen’Dai under that helm,” Omera said with a smile as she reached to tap on his crown gently. 

“You know of the Gen’Dai?” he asked with genuine surprise.

“Mm. You are not the only person here who was not born on Sorgan, Mando-”

“Din.”

“Happy birthday, Din,” she replied quietly, the smile never leaving her face even as the sun put herself to bed finally and beckoned the moon to the sky.


	7. Chapter 7

In that moment, in that singular moment, everything felt like too much. Omera was painfully aware of every single ghosting touch and of the way that he guided her with unwavering purpose. The sash Din had covered her eyes with was a length of aubergine silk from the Outer Rim that she’d bartered for, heavy and embroidered and smelling of lavender when she inhaled a slow breath. He’d moved them to sit, first facing each other until she’d crawled into his lap with her knees tucked at his waist. She couldn’t see the gentle way he looked at her, how he handled her like spun glass to keep her close, or how he had tucked his teeth over his bottom lip to keep from smiling when she touched him.

At first, it was hesitant. She traced the broad bridge of his nose with the side of her thumb and lower to follow the careful curve of his mouth where he tucked a soft kiss to the pad of her finger. She felt the rough scratch of his beard against her palm and ducked forward to press a light smear of kisses along his jaw before following it lower to tuck one under the soft spot behind his ear. He smelled clean like washing soap and it sent a thrill down her spine, so she lingered there to breathe him in as her fingers found the high sweep of his brow and the coarse line of his hair at his temple.

He’d never stopped watching her. Even when she’d settled against his chest, he’d watched the slope of her back and the swell of her hips and the way her hair had curled around her neck. He resisted the urge to turn his face to fit into her palm and calmed his breathing, even when she kissed the hollow of his throat and let her teeth flash against his skin.

“Thank you,” Omera said quietly, her head turned up so that she could speak against his mouth. It was impossibly dark and brilliantly bright all at the same time when she felt him smile. “I didn’t imagine a beard.”

“But you did imagine.”

“I did imagine.”


	8. Chapter 8

“I wanted to thank you.”

The sound of her voice was almost riotous in the crystal thin silence of the hut. Din had been so buried in his planning that he hadn’t heard her coming and ducked his head quickly as he reached for his helm in a perfunctory attempt at hiding his face. “Omera-”

“I’m not- my eyes are closed,” she clarified, her chin turned up towards the thatched ceiling and lids shut tight. “I didn’t see anything, I promise. I just… I wanted to thank you for everything that you’ve done for us and to see if you needed anything before you went.”

He hesitated and was sure in that moment that his whole life had been upended by careless minutiae. Still, he didn’t put the helm back on though he hadn’t put it down either until he stood finally and turned to face her. 

She was beautiful like that, limned in gauzy moonlight and dressed in just a night shift. Omera had clearly been out walking, her hair tucked up on her head and dressed with small pins that looked like dew drops. “Lalmy’ashian pearls,” he noted almost offhandedly as he reached to touch the one right above her ear. “You don’t need to thank me. I’ve only done what needed to be done.”

“Humility is wasted on a faceless man,” Omera replied softly. Her arms were wrapped around her waist as if to keep her warm and when she palmed his waist on either side, it was with sure hands. “Did you need-”

Her words lived and died behind the kiss when it came. He’d closed the space on a throb of want that painted him golden from his core and when he caught her mouth, it was a little too roughly and a little too eager to be chaste. She tasted like mint and cedar and consequence, and he could barely handle the ache where it throbbed. Din had to pull back to drag down a breath when he felt like drowning and touched their foreheads when he did, his hands impossibly gentle where they’d cupped her face to keep her close.

“No,” he said finally. “I don’t need anything.”


	9. Chapter 9

“Where did you find an Imperial sash?”

Omera froze but the flash of panic didn’t show on her face. She took pause and took stock, her dress already half undone and one of his hands still cupped against her neck. “It’s mine,” she answered finally. The room seemed to tilt and wheel on its own access when she heard Din take a sharp breath, and him pulling his hand away was as good as a slap. “Please-”

“I should have known,” Din replied with a gruff sound. He turned his head away when Omera took the moment to dress and felt suffocated under his helm in an instant. How close they’d come, he thought dryly, to something great. He’d been searching for something to cover her eyes with when he’d found the heavy jacquard cloth and immediately felt something horrible drop into his stomach. “A good shot? A liar and criminal.”

“I served Queen Soruna during the Rebellion,” Omera said crisply, though the edge in her voice was tremulous at best. “A handmaiden from the day I was born. The Battle of Endor did not end the war for everyone, Mando.” She was flushed and tasted the cool slip of tears before they fell. “Korro did what he could to protect us, not that Her Majesty needed protecting. We’d all been trained to save her life before our own. That is why I can shoot.”

Din felt numb and overfull all at once, brimming with apologies and bitterness the same. He swallowed and set the sash down before reaching to take her hand, unsurprised when she pulled it away. “I’m sorry,” he said. “You should burn it.”

“I should have done many things,” she said quietly. “You should go.”

And so he did.


	10. Chapter 10

“Can Mandalorians get married?”

“Yes.”

“Sorry, I meant can normal Mandalorians get married, not zealots.”

Din turned his head to level Cara a deadpanned look, not that she could see it through his visor. “I am a normal Mandalorian.”

“You are absolutely the furthest thing from normal.” She smiled sweetly but it was flip and he knew it. The cup in her hand was practically empty and Din had half a mind to take it before she could refill. “I’m just saying, you should expand your horizons.”

“I don’t even know why we’re having this conversation.”

“Because-” Cara said, her smile gone a little looser when she tracked Omera chasing Winta and the Child through the reeds to try and wrench a gluuod frog from his mouth, “-I like an underdog story. What’s your starplan from here? Roam the universe looking for trouble while teaching a kid to tie his sandals?”

“The trouble usually finds us without much effort,” Din answered dryly. He was following Omera with his eyes as well and had moved to stand and help when Cara propped her legs up on the table in front of him and shook her head. “Oh, come on-”

“Sit down, Mando. We’re talking.”

“You’re talking. I’m suffering.”

“See, it’s fun for the whole crew. Sit down.”

The sigh he heaved was heavy enough that it fogged up his visor and he had no choice but to sit again. “I should have left the planet when I had the chance.”

“There’s an idea.”

“Who is this supposed to be fun for again?”

“Me.”

“Right.”


	11. Chapter 11

Seven years passed in the blink of an eye. Change came, as it was wont to do, and dragged time along with it. Trees grew brown and stars grew dark, but the slow slip of forever never once had the audacity to stop.

Finding Sorgan again was as much of a challenge as it had been chance the first time. Din had pushed the curiosity to the deepest places of his heart and let it burn and smolder until the gentle edge of needing to know took over. He’d taken the Child-no, his name was Grogu and he was not a child anymore-to Skywalker for him to spend his time with the foundling Jedi Order and fallen back into back alleys and hired work. He was fulfilled.

All the same, it called him back. In his dreams, he tasted cedar and pine and sour spotchka from the last night. He remembered the way she’d hidden her face against the crook of his neck and breathed soft mouthed pleas for more more more there. She’d let him cover her eyes with a soft length of fabric torn from the bottom of an unfinished dress and they’d fallen into each other then. He’d knotted her hair into the sash on accident and she’d laughed, lilting and golden in the dark, when he’d put her on her stomach instead and covered her body with his own, chest to back and his teeth set against the bird wing curve of her shoulder to stifle his breathing.

He’d been gone the next morning and she’d known no more than when he’d arrived.

Finding Sorgan was a needle in the haystack and took his patience to a place he’d never had to go before. A fortnight swirled him in and out of the galaxy until he’d finally located the small patch of green in an endless abyss.

The village was largely unchanged which was to say it were completely different. The ponds shuttered with krill and children whooped and hollered as they bolted past him with an unfettered joy. He searched each of their faces for Winta before remembering that Winta was a woman now, not a child anymore.

“Who are you?”

The voice behind him would have been startling had he not heard the little boy coming. “Who are you?” Din asked in response, curious for a moment if the boy could interpret his gentility through the helm.

“Adnae.”

“Adnae,” Din repeated. He tipped his chin down and took a knee then, putting himself at eye level with the boy when he did. “Do you know Winta? Can you take me to her?”

“Who are you?” Adnae repeated, his nose a little stuffy and his hair wild with thick black curls. He reached and plastered a hand on Din’s face plate. “Are you a solider?”

“No. Please don’t touch that,” he said. It made him wince a little when Adnae pulled his hand back and pouted. “I can’t see if you cover my face. My name is Mando-”

“He’s a liar. His name is Din Djarin and he is a soldier. Come here, Adnae.” 

Winta was impossibly tall and willowy, her hair to her waist and her face a copy of her mother’s. The boy didn’t hesitate to listen, running to take Winta’s hand and then her hip when she hoisted him up. “She’s resting.”

“Is she ill?” Din asked tersely, his fingers gone reflexively to curl against his palm when he stood again.

“No. She is tired,” Winta replied. “We are just recovering from a blight. It has been a long moon.”

Din nodded, as if that response were enough. He watched Adnae struggle to get down for a moment and had opened his mouth to say something before the child bolted. “Yours?”

“My brother.”

The air went still and Din exhaled a breath as if he’d been kicked. He’d known as soon as he’d seen him and still, it were as if the world had split to swallow him whole. He nodded once and began to walk, pausing only to squeeze Winta’s hand before he continued. His presence drew gazes but they were unanswered, as were Cara’s somewhat obnoxious calls when he passed her on his way.

The hut was dark and quiet, with heavy shades drawn over the windows, and when Din entered, it took a moment for his eyes to adjust. He heard rustling and steadied himself on the door frame when Omera yawned and pushed up to sit. Adnae, it seemed, had beaten him there and was curled at his mother’s side with a crooked grin.

“See?” he said, his voice low and conspiratorial. “A solider, Mama.”

“He’s not a soldier,” Omera replied softly. She watched Din’s movements as he crossed to take a knee, one and then the other. It was warm in the small space, warm enough that she’d pushed the covers back when Adnae had crawled into bed with her. “He is a good man.”

Din felt hollowed out, raw and helpless for the first time in his life as he reached to push the helm up and off. It rolled from his hand to clatter onto the floor and he couldn’t help but wonder how he’d ever put it on in the first place when Adnae reached to touch his mouth.

It was like dying, something sweet and impossible to place, alive with an ebullient joy as the child-his child-mapped the lines of his father’s face with soft fingers. Din never took his eyes off the boy, instead reaching to pull Omera’s hand to his chest so that she could feel the scattershot throb of his heart through his tunic.

He was not a Mandalorian. Not anymore.


	12. Chapter 12

The first night is the worst.

Sure, he’s been around people before (or, at least, other Mandalorians) and yeah, he’s met children once or twice, but spending time with large groups of people and their millions of questions isn’t exactly Din’s idea of a good time.

“Can I wear your helmet?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because he’s ugly underneath it.”

Kriff off, Cara, he thinks, but he’s also a little bit grateful. The widow’s daughter is alright and she seems to keep the kid busy, so it can’t all be bad. Krill isn’t anywhere near the worst thing he’s ever eaten and after a while, once the fires start to die down and the stars pull bright into the sky, Din lets himself relax.

“I’m sorry for her questions.”

The sound of her voice is far away even though she’s right there next to him and by the time Din looks up, she’s right in front of him which puts them nearly nose to nose when he stands before he takes a step back.

Fuck. She’s beautiful.

“It’s fine,” he says, even though it is totally, one hundred percent not fine in the least. “They’re curious by nature.”

The widow raises an eyebrow and gestures for him to sit again before she sits too. She’s tall and slender with that almost odd leonine face that he can’t look away from when she talks. He has half a mind to ask if she’s a Near Human but doesn’t.

“Have you been around a lot of children?” she asks him. He can tell she’s trying to figure out how to address him (anything but sir, anything but sir, anything but sir) but that question derails him completely.

“What?”

“Children. Have you been around a lot of children before?”

Din takes the silence in stride and sits on it for a moment. No, not expressly. There are Mandalorian children, sure, but he’s only had incidental contact with them for the entirety of his thirty six years and to be completely honest, the last twelve hours have been a little overwhelming on the whole, so instead of lying, he just shrugs. “A few.”

That’s the first night.

Things get a little weird after the raiders. It’s not that he isn’t glad for them because that whole not dying in a planned attack in the middle of the night thing seems to really take the pressure off of the village. It’s more that he doesn’t know what to do next.

Staying on Sorgan isn’t really a longterm plan. There’s not a ton of work for a bounty hunter where there’s no crime and something tells Din that hustling the Klatooine outpost for tab jumpers isn’t exactly a career. Still, the kid is happy there and the widow-her name is Omera he knows now-has been an excellent host.

Sometimes he can’t help but wonder if she knows that he’s watching her. That night against the AT-ST had launched a million questions, all of which he thinks have answers that he doesn’t want to know. He asks Cara one night and the silence before she answers doesn’t exactly give him a huge vote of confidence.

“Imperial training?”

Cara shrugs. “Soldier or prisoner. The difference doesn’t really matter.”

“I think that’s situational.”

“I’m telling you it’s not,” Cara says and that’s that.

Alright, so she’s a beautiful young widow on a nearly deserted planet who could match him shot for shot. Sure. Whatever.

All the same, he watches Omera more closely after that and he hates to say that he agrees with Cara’s assessment. The forest yields its fair share of surprises that don’t come with blaster attached, and Omera never seems to flinch. When one of the village toddlers slips into one of the ponds, she fishes him out without so much as a cursory glance to see if anyone else is watching and wipes the mud off of his face before sending him on his way. 

Din makes eye contact with her and when she smiles, he’s grateful for the visor.

It should be easy to leave but when he starts considering the kid staying, it puts an odd pit in his stomach. His safety isn’t what he’s worried about; there’s nothing about the village that feels less safe that paling around the galaxy with a contract killer. That being said, it takes a few days for him to finally get to a place where he can bring it up organically.

“I need to ask you something,” he says quietly one night. Omera’s come to bring him supper after the kids have all gone to bed. Cara is back at the Klatooine outpost for a few nights, desperate to speak to someone that isn’t so goddamned nice, and when she knocks, it doesn’t startle him like it should have because he’s been expecting her.

“Alright.”

“I-” Din hates that he’s having second thoughts, though he’s not sure it’s because of anything in particular (that’s a lie, he’s totally losing his shit) so he just sighs and says, “I need the kid to stay here.”

“Okay.”

“I-what?”

“I said okay.”

They regard each other in the lim of moonlight for a long time. She’s close enough that he can count the splay of her lashes when she blinks and is almost overwhelmed by the urge to touch her mouth, a desire that is so wildly foreign that it pulls a face he’s glad she can’t see. “Alright,” he say quietly.

Omera doesn’t push him for an explanation but she does reach to settle a gentle hand on his vambrace. “You could stay too.”

The visceral reaction that receives is insane. He feels all of the heat rush to his face and the way his thighs go tight is almost painful in and of itself. He’s not sure when the last time someone touched him when they weren’t trying to kill him was and it makes him a little lightheaded before he manages to exhales a breath. “I know,” he says.

There’s that.

He’s played himself a bad hand at that point. They’ve been on Sorgan for nearly six weeks and more than once, Din has caught himself watching her. The sway of her body, the way her hair slips over her shoulder, the curve of her jaw, it’s all intoxicating. He thinks maybe the Jedi are onto something with their “no marriage or meaningful relationships of any kind” bullshit, though he’s still not one hundred percent sure that Vader wouldn’t have deeply benefitted from a hug or twelve. The absurd thought that maybe he could stay there crosses his mind more than once and it even gets to the point that takes matters into his own hand, as it were, for the first time since he was like, fourteen. 

That definitely makes things worse.

Okay, so maybe he could stay on Sorgan with the kid-his kid-and the beautiful widow and make a life there. When she asks him that last time, the look they share is one that’ll haunt him for the rest of his life because it reminds him that he’s human and that? That’s the scariest kriffin’ thought he’s had in a lifetime. The tension on his neck when she goes to remove his helm is unbearable and the way he catches her wrists is an act of love, pure and simple.

“I don’t belong here,” he says and when she tells him she understands, he thinks that she’s lying for his benefit.

That’s the last night.


	13. Chapter 13

He’s not staring.

Okay, that’s bullshit, he’s totally staring but to be fair, he’s almost always these days. He’s been on Sorgan without his armor for two months and while it hasn’t exactly been the most enjoyable experience (as it turns out, learning how to be a fully functional person under the watchful gaze of forty strangers is harder than expected), it’s certainly not the worst. Omera is kind and gentle in all of the ways Din knew she would be and alive in ways he never could have expected.

They’ve been working on that physicality thing but touch starved doesn’t even come close to describing it. The first few times that she absently trails a hand along his back are almost crippling to the point of trembling and she notices.

“I won’t touch you if you don’t want me to.”

“Where in the world did you get the idea that I _don’t_ want you to touch me?”

It gets easier. 

Eventually, Din lets himself be loved in all of the wonderful and frightening ways that she can love him. She helps him learn the subtleties of social nuance, though it’s not without incident. He thinks that one day, when he learns to keep his reactions off of his face, he’ll be a better father to Winta but until then, he apologizes like it’s a second language and they forgive him over and over again. It is the deeply intimate bond of family that he never knew existed and it overwhelms him more than once.

That night, they’re sitting in the long hall after dinner while the children run in circles, Grogu toddling behind Winta in a patter of quick steps. Din smiles, just the softest tilt of his mouth and glances sidelong at Omera where she’s picking at grapes absently to put in his palm. “They’re going to break their heads open running around that table like that,” he says over the rim of his glass before he takes a sip and pops the grape in his mouth. 

Omera laughs. “They’d hardly be the first children to need sutures for being foolhardy,” she says. 

The thought seems hilarious to him for some reason when he’s hit with the mental image of a queue of children lined up at the healer for sutures. “Have you?” he asks, gesturing loosely towards her with his cup and then tipping his head towards the children as if to complete the question.

“Of course.” Her chair scrapes on the a little as she scoots it back to peel up the hem of her tunic to show him the pale stretch of her stomach that is mottled and marred with a wide ragged scar. Din is grateful for the dim light in the hall so that she can’t see how he’s gone pink, but it’s the first time he’s seen her body under her clothes and he feels foolish for how his pulse has kicked up. “This was a horse bite when I was twelve. They put bacta on it and called it a day.”

There, she pauses and hitches the tunic up a little higher so that he can see a clean sharp line that runs the length of her spine when she turns, her hair slipping over her shoulder when she glances at him. “I was hunched when I was born,” she tells him, not unaware of how his gaze has gone a little glassy. She lets the tunic settle again and sits to scoop his hands up, thumbs sliding over his palms. “There’s one on my thigh from a reaver attack-”

“Reavers?” Dyn asks, his stupor interrupted by the statement. “Where in the stars did you meet a reaver?”

Omera smiles and bobs her eyebrows once before rolling her sleeves up to show him the pocked scars along her forearms and elbows. “Pox. I was the only adult here to get it because I wasn’t born here.”

“Small blessing,” he murmurs as he pulls her arm to his mouth so that he can kiss her wrist, a shockingly open show of temerity after weeks of shying away from it. “Any others?”

“None that I can show you in the long hall.”

Din blushes at that and tightens his grip on her wrist until she turns her hand to cup his face against her palm. “Are you finished eating?”

“I can be.”

“Good.”


End file.
